With the advancement of mobile devices and machine automation, new ways of interfacing with technology are emerging. Users now have the ability to interact with automated systems in many environments.
One such interaction can take place in the field of automated compliance and monitoring systems, such as hand washing compliance systems in restaurants and hospitals. These automated systems can reduce many expenses including costs due to human error, employment costs, and costs of complexity arising from lack of standardization.
Automated systems of this kind are increasingly seen as invaluable in environments where compliance is crucial and alternatives are difficult and expensive to implement. Illustratively, it has been reported that more than 50% of all nosocomial infections can be directly related to the transmission of harmful bacteria by healthcare workers who have not properly washed their hands before and after each patient contact.
Thus, the best means to prevent transfer of these organisms from patient to patient and to reduce the emergence of resistant organisms is hand-washing with soap and water between patient contacts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as other regulatory agencies recommend hand-washing before and after each patient encounter.
Automated compliance systems in a healthcare environment can increase compliance rates noticeably; however, the implementation of automated compliance systems is fraught with difficulties. Chief among these difficulties is preventing the spread and exposure to health care-associated infections during use and control of the compliance system in a streamlined and intuitive way that does not prohibitively increase the workload of the users, which can lead to an aversion to using the system.
The spread and exposure to health care-associated infections can arise when users are required to interface and control an automated compliance system by using direct physical contact. Many previous developments have been advanced to address this problem.
For example, some automated systems attempt to isolate the use of a compliance system and the control of the compliance system. This isolation method introduces the additional problems of higher workload and the additional responsibility to return to the compliance system at a later time.
Effective solutions have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any, and solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art. Thus there remains a considerable need for devices and methods that can touchlessly control and interface with compliance systems.